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Copyright © 2010 Cassandra Vivian. All Rights Reserved. To order additional copies of this book go to www.cassandravivian.com

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Before he knows what is happening, the traveller in the Middle East finds himself travelling in time as well as space, between epoch as well as between country and country. --Julian Huxley

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Our Russian Aleutian plane flew through the Egyptian skies toward the frontier town of Aswan. It was a bright and shiny December day and the cabin was filled with holiday tourists. Over the magical land of Thebes, modern Luxor, something turned wrong. Despite the fact that the cabin was buzzing with activity, the plane began to descent and the captain urged everyone to return to their seats and fasten their seat belts. The stewards rushed through the cabin with worried looks on their faces. Passengers could not put their trays up because they were still loaded with food and drinks. The bathroom door swung open and a shocked and disheveled woman exited the toilet just as the wheels hit the concrete with a bang: the trays crashed, the woman fell, and the passengers panicked. Everything was helter-skelter.

"Will all Luxor passengers please exit the plane," came a dry-in-the-throat voice. "All passengers bound for Aswan remain seated"

"Well, at least we're not burning," said Mary in a shrill voice. She would be my roommate throughout the trip.

"Will all passengers please exit the plane." "Will all passengers please exit the plane.""Maybe we are burning," Mary exclaimed as we moved quickly to the exit. The small Luxor airport was in pandemonium. I looked back at the plane.

Attached to the tail was a tangle of ropes extending down the runway for a good 70 yards, culminating with a large, yellow, fully-inflated, rubber dingy. We had been flying through the clear Egyptian skies with our dingy hanging out. How the Gods must have laughed. Now, on the ground, there was no one to put it back.And there was no plane to take us to Aswan. The Egyptian fleet, like the Luxor

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airport, was not so large at the time. There were only two flights a day: Cairo to Luxor, Luxor to Aswan, back to Luxor, and back to Cairo, twice. We were stuck. No one knew what to do with us. Finally, we were taken to Luxor and deposited on the verandah of the Luxor Hotel.

Luxor is ancient Thebes: Thebes of the thousand gates, Thebes of the New Kingdom of the ancient land. It was home to Ramses II and his wife Nefertari; the great female pharaoh Hatshupsut and her warrior stepson, Thutmoses III; and Akhenaton and his wife Nefertiti, who both worshiped the one god. Across the Nile in the barren Theban hills, lie the ancient cemeteries: the Valley of the Nobles where the wealthy are buried, the Valley of the Queens, where the king’s family rests, and the Valley of the Kings where the pharaohs sleep surrounded by the material splendors of their lives.

The once massive ancient city was now a small rural community. It was 1974. The great tourist revolution had not yet begun. Hundreds of tourist boats had not yet penetrated the shoreline of Luxor. Only graceful, wonderful, lazy feluccas dotted the Nile. The Open Door Policy of Anwar Sadat had just begun. Luxor still moved to the rhythmic clopping of horses and the cry of vendors selling dates.

As I looked around me in those first few moments I realized that Luxor was haunted. The ancient kingdom had not disappeared; it was waiting for us to round the bend and fall into its arms. From the verandah of the Luxor Hotel I began to see the ghosts. Up from the river's edge came a procession of ancient High Priests led by the delicate jingling sounds of temple bells and the scantily- clad, wonderfully-scented, temple dancers. From the gardens of the Old Winter Palace Hotel came an Edwardian paper chase on its way to a treasure hunt. Out of the Luxor suk came a local farmer wearing his long Upper Egyptian robe called a galabeyyiah and leading his donkeys and camels all heavily laden with produce. Modern tourists in Bermuda shorts and funny hats ran in all directions not quite sure what they were expected to do, which picture to take, which scene to follow. Donkeys brayed, men and women shouted, cameras clicked. It was

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chaos. The Edwardians ran head-long into the ancient Egyptians. A camel spit at a High Priest. A temple dancer circled a farmer seductively. The images were all jumbled together, the centuries were blurring into this spectacular mirage: farmers running into tourists running into Edwardians running into temple dancers running into hawkers of souvenir post cards. Here was Hemingway's moveable feast.

The catalyst, the reason the amazing spectacle existed on this spot was Luxor Temple that magnificent edifice that has stood here as testament to the ancient civilization for thousands of years. There were more ghosts waiting amid its halls and columns to act

out the sagas of centuries. A youthful Tutankhamen of the 19th dynasty of the New Kingdom stood at his graceful colonnade berating Henry Salt, the British Proconsul of the

19th century, for building a guest house within the temple walls. Tut was irate. He shook his finger at Salt menacingly and then turned to a Roman soldier standing guard nearby. He demanded the Romans return the stones they stole from his Opet wall to build their houses.

A majestic, but grateful, Amenhotep III, the great pharaoh who built the main temple, stood thankfully beside Gaston Maspero, the Director of the Antiquities Service of Egypt in 1883, as Maspero began demolishing the unwanted houses and cleaning out the debris of centuries.

Francis Frith, the British photographer, who came to Egypt in 1831, leaned against the shoulder of one of the half buried statues of Ramses II at the first pylon, while the great Ramses himself demanded the mudbrick pigeon and squatters houses be destroyed and his carefully carved granite statues be released from the dirt.

My fellow traveler Gustave Flaubert, the French novelist, who seldom saw anything in Egypt other than the soft skin and warm embrace of a harlot, stared at the obelisk in front of the pylon.

"Where is the other obelisk?" bellowed Ramses at Flaubert.Flaubert, not to be intimidated, ignored the raging Pharaoh. But Lucy Duff Gordon,

a British convalescent who wintered in Luxor and was about to be

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evicted from Henry Salt's guest house, a gentler and kinder soul than Flaubert, calmed the angry Pharaoh.

"Do not worry Your Royal Highness. It is safe."She was about to tell him that it was in France when the Prince of Wales, on a tour

in the Khedive Ismael's grand boat, burst in,"The Frogs have it. Izzy gave it to them."Flaubert's eyes narrowed as he looked at the prince He was about to speak, and

from the look of him his words would be harsh and begin with an epithet, when Frith startled the moment. He took a photo! The powder exploded in Ramses face. Ramses was not only shocked, but he was amazed. He walked toward Frith to have a better look at this fascinating machine with its exploding powder. He could surely use that against his enemies. Flaubert walked briskly away and jotted in his notebook, ". . . how bored it [Ramses' obelisk] must be in the Place do la Concorde! How it must miss its Nile."

I looked in Flaubert's direction. Just beyond him, near the edge of Ramses's pylon I saw the glimpse of a woman. Her long, 19th century skirts rustled as she moved out of view and fell into the purple shadows.

The images did not stop. Artists and stone masons from ancient Egypt, clad only in loin cloths, their berry-brown skin glistening in the hot Luxor sun, stood behind the archaeologists and artists of the Epigraphic Survey of the Oriental Institute of Chicago's Chicago House as they labored at the monumental task of recording the intricate drawings on the walls of the temple. Sometimes the ancient artists chuckled, sometimes they guided the modern pens with sure and steady hands, smiling, and nodding approval.

Ancient engineers chastised anyone who would listen for allowing the temple to be attacked by ground water. They tried valiantly to show us the way, to solve the problem before their masterpiece fell to ruin forever. They had dealt with the Nile floods for centuries. They knew how to save the temples. But no one was listening. Modern man, who had erected the High Dam at Aswan in the 1970s, harnessing the river and stopping the floods that had sustained the valley

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and its people since the beginning of time, had created a new problem in the valley of the Nile. Salt was leaching up from the soil into the ancient monuments causing the sandstone to flake off, destroying the wondrous art of the ancient craftsmen. They were furious, but the men who had created the dam and the problem were long gone from Egypt so they could not haunt them and chastise them and beg them to follow their lead.

“Pour a slab of liquid plastic under the temple,” came a shout from two modern day oil men. “It will stop the leaching.” But no one was listening.

Then a chariot made such a clatter than everyone, dancer, artist, tourist, and priest, put down their bells, brushes, cameras, and incense and turned to see what was happening. They were not disappointed. Speeding toward them behind mighty horses, Pharaoh Thutmoses III raced his chariot through the Avenue of Sphinxes, stopping at the entrance to the temple. He cracked his whip over the crowd. The horses reared on their hind legs and snorted. Their eyes terrorized all nearby.

"Tell them to bring Ramses’s obelisk back," he shouted at the top of his voice. The temple walls shook. "Ramses gives us no rest. He whines over that damn obelisk and neglects his responsibilities. Nefertari cries every night. We get no rest in the Valley of the Kings. Bring it back."

What a sight! What a spectacle! And there was no sign that it would ever end. It would continue to unravel here in this place forever adding new dramas to the scene as the centuries moved on. And there was I, sitting on a fallen pillar. "Oh, Luxor! Oh, city of a thousand gates. You have made me your slave." I rejoiced. "I, too, will join this panorama of history. I, too, will walk in your temples and dance for the Festival of Opet."

So, this was Egypt. My God, what a place. I was going to love it here: Pharaohs and travelers and historians and archaeologists all wrapped up in warped time.

"Dearie, you want a juice," came a voice into my reverie, knocking a temple dancer on her bottom and a High Priest into an imaginary sacred pool.

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"Dearie, dearie," came the screeching voice again, dissolving my illusions completely. As my mind worked its way back to reality I heard her say,

"Orange or this purplish stuff with the funny name.""Kar'--ka--day," shouted the waiter with a smile on his lips, but annoyance in his

eyes. "Karkadee.""I'll have that." I told him."Yes, yes, karkadee, karkadee," said the old Egyptian waiter, his eyes smiling

again. "It is very good, madam."I sipped the sweet and pleasant juice of the hibiscus flower smiling. I leaned back in

the bamboo chair, closed my eyes and let the warm sun coat my skin like velvet. I began to think.

A foreign woman becomes bathed in sensuality in Egypt. She dances to seductive music in ancient temples and sways before a bored pharaoh. She reclines on soft pillows as she sails on the Nile, the moonlight glistening on the rippling water as a turbaned lover places garlands of jasmine around her neck and feeds her luscious grapes. She walks through medieval suqs where the air is rich with the smell of incense as she is lured to a secret rendezvous. Her senses are bombarded with the exotic, the mystical, the fantastic. Like millions of women before her, she becomes intoxicated with the East, the romantic East, the unreal East. She sees men in long flowing robes reaching down from their snorting steeds and sweeping her away to a desert dune. In her mind she succumbs again and again to the mysteries of the Orient. She does not want to know that the images are false, created by Western writers and painters. She is content to revel in them. How can she not be a willing victim to the lure of romance?

She is more than overjoyed when a young, virile, Egyptian youth with hair as black as night, eyes like almonds, and a firm, young body is prepared to grant all her wishes. He calls her a precious, rare, jewel and gives her a wonderful smile. She titillates with pleasure when he kisses her hand and looks longingly into her eyes. She is overwhelmed. And she is gratefully seduced.

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No one, but no one, has the glory and mystery of exotic Oriental romance down as pat as the boys of Nile Street. You find them in Luxor and Aswan, where the main road that stretches beside the Nile bears its name. But they live in the back streets in poverty and squalor. You find them hanging out at tourist hotels, travel agencies, and historic sites. They are not admired by the majority of Egyptians, who looked down on them for their lack of discretion and open pursuit of heathen women. They live under the constraints of a religion that forbids them sexual intercourse without marriage. And, although Judaism and Christianity demand the same of their followers, it is in Islam that the rules of chastity are obeyed. But romancing the foreigners is their rite of passage. It is their glorious journey into manhood.

The foreign woman in Egypt is the whore of Babylon. She is the seductress. She is the fleshpot. Not only is she forbidden fruit, she represents Western materialism, Western wealth, and Western power. A conquest of such a creature gives it all to them, if only for a little while. She is their Ifta al Simsim: their "open sesame!"

These young, virile men caress and kiss their treasures with the greatest of pleasure. The dowdy wives, middle-aged spinsters, or fat and ugly young girls are suddenly in the arms of handsome young men who are professing undying love, who present them with garlands of flowers, who create new life and renewed hope. Is it wrong to reward such gifts with a watch, a hundred dollar bill, a trip to London? Can these mere material things compare with the renewal they have brought to the old, or the fat, or the forgotten woman that the West has discarded?

Upon occasion a woman becomes so enamored with her young lover that she intends to hold on to him forever. Then the story of the boys of Nile Street turns tragic. The romance must be taken as it is given, completely fulfilling, but completely temporary.

Years later I unexpectedly came across romance turned to agony in an old Barber Shop in the suq at Aswan. I was on special assignment doing a history of

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the Cataract Hotel for the new owners. It was Christmas of 1987 and my friend Tim and I were driving down the Nile. We were both photographers, so this was to be a photo safari. We were taking our time as we drove from Cairo to Aswan in his blue Volkswagen beetle. Once we arrived at Aswan, we planned to spend a few days together then Tim would deposit me at the Cataract to do my work and go on without me. I intended to take the plane, at the Cataract's expense, back to Cairo.

We were walking in the suq."I have been photographing barber shops all over Egypt," said Tim, "and they really

have a wonderful one here. I want to get a haircut. I want to shoot it.""I'll come with you," I said.The suq in Aswan is more African that Middle Eastern, for Aswan is the backdoor of

Africa. Here the world is Nubian, and Nubia turns Egypt African. In ancient times, Nubia had granite for the pharaoh's builders. Nubia had trade routes through which the interior of Africa could be explored and exploited.Trade became Aswan's most important commodity. Out of Egypt into Nubia and sub-Saharan Africa went the goods of the world. Items unavailable and different from what Africa produced: exotic perfumes from the suqs of Cairo, basic cotton and linen cloth, clay pottery, and glazed bead which were used for trade as well as adornment. They would be replaced by African items eagerly sought by Egypt and the world: spices, slaves, animal skins, ivory, ostrich feathers, and ostrich eggs. Down the Nile they came, through the ferocious cataracts, through the golden sands of Nubia, and into Aswan where the suqs awaited them.

Since time beyond time the trade went on. It is still evident in the Aswan suq. Dyes of purple, yellow, and crimson hues are piled high on flat, woven,palm-frond trays; tamarind, frankincense, cumin, arrowroot, and other spices fill deep woven baskets with their bulk and fill the air with their aroma. Animal skins, now mostly limited to gazelle and ibex instead of leopard and crocodile, hang from outdoor stalls while animal-horned knives, leather belts, and animal- skin drums stand beside the new, tradable commodities of bootleg cassettes,

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boom-boxes, and other electronics that have been smuggled into Aswan through the desert.

The modern traveler does not need ghosts to conjure up images in Aswan's suq. The ghosts are surely there. Rudolf Slatin’s dramatic escape from Khartoum in 1895, slaves torn from their families and offered for sale, men laboring in the granite hills cutting obelisks out of the native stone, they all came to the suq in Aswan. But today, we had a mission and those ghosts, although playing in the corner of my mind, could not be conjured, or would not be conjured, or had no intention of disturbing the mission at hand. Besides, real images walk nonchalantly through the narrow and crowded spaces, rubbing elbows, so to speak, with gapping tourists. Rashida tribesmen, draped in white robes and wrapped with tiered headdresses, large curved African knives at their waist, paused to barter for goods or sell contraband before rejoining their Sudanese camel caravans on their journey north to Cairo. Bisherine, fuzzy- wuzzys to British colonials, stood tall and arrow-straight, balancing themselves on long African spears, as they looked and listened to the strange music of the Beatles blasting out of plastic boxes. Here a pelican, wings clipped to stop his return north after a winter on the Nile, tried to nip at my legs. There a screaming monkey bared his teeth in a frighten-ly thin wired cage.

Amid all this turmoil stood Tim's favorite barber shop. It wasn't more than eight feet long and five feet wide (see cover). Mirrors lined the walls so that the bustle of the suq formed a backdrop. When we entered, a young man was already in the chair, so we sat down to wait. Beside us was a well-dressed young man who spoke fluent English and introduced himself as a tour guide. He had deep bags under his eyes and was extremely agitated, twitching in the chair, inhaling an imported Marlboro cigarette, and blowing smoke in jerky puffs.

Tim, smelling a good story, said, "What's the matter?" "I am exhausted, exhausted," he lamented, near tears."Why? What's the problem?" probed Tim, as his eyes starting to twinkle in

anticipation.

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"You must help me. You must help me to understand."Through a series of staccato questions and answers it became clear that the

young man had two wives: one, a young, beautiful, devout Muslim girl from Aswan whom he loved and adored, and the other, an old Englishwoman he had met and wooed in Luxor as one of the boys of Nile Street.

"Does the Englishwoman know you have a second wife?" I asked. "She is the second wife." he wailed."Did she know when she married you?" "Yes, yes, she knew.""Where do you keep these two wives?" asked Tim."The Englishwoman is in an apartment in Luxor and my Egyptian wife is here in

Aswan.""You must provide equally for them." said Tim knowingly."Yes, yes, the Koran is very clear and they have more of me than I have. Things are

out of control." he wept. "I have no life. They are taking the life from me. I am exhausted."Tim prodded some more, "Are you getting too much of a good thing?" he asked

with a gleam in his eye."Yes!!!" screamed the young man nearly jumping out of his chair, "and it is no

longer a good thing. My Aswan wife is angry because I am too tired to make love to her when I come home. She thinks I do not love her. But my Luxor wife wants to make love over and over and over every day. Every day, every day, four and five times a day" he screamed. "I cannot. I cannot. I cannot. Are all foreign women like this?" He looked directly at me.

"How old are you?" I asked."I am twenty-two, but I am one hundred now. I am finished." "How old is your Luxor wife?" I retorted."She is fifty-nine.""Fifty-nine," I said to him in amazement."Yes, yes, fifty-nine. You would think she had enough of such things."

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I laughed. I was much wiser as to the ways of Nile Street in 1987 than I was on my first visit to Egypt in 1974. Although I had left the boys of Nile Street behind, I knew the stories very well.

"Why did you marry the Englishwoman?" I asked. "It does not matter," he shifted."Yes, it matters very much," I retorted. "Did she take you to England?" "Yes, but she did not want to stay there. She wanted to live in Luxor." "Did you want to live in Luxor?" I continued, knowing the answer before

he spoke it."No. It was my chance. Now it is gone."Tim, ever ready with a probe, "You should divorce the old bitch." "She is a good woman. She has been very good to me. I cannot shame

her." Here it was, even in the most difficult of situations, the gift of Egypt. This boy, overwhelmed by bad choices, at the verge of hysteria, could not shame the old lady who clearly had put herself in harm’s way.

"What of your family?" I asked."My family. Ohhh, my family. They do not know about the Luxor wife. My Aswan

wife keeps threatening to tell them. My Luxor wife says she will talk to my Aswan wife and my family. I am doomed. My family will never understand."

"So, what is your solution?""I will die and they can have each other."Here was a case of the romance going array. The Englishwoman had become

drugged by the Nile, the moon, the temples, and forbidden love among the ruins. She wanted to make the dream last forever. The young man saw her as a conduit to a better life, a way to a new world. But it did not work. It seldom does. If we only knew where to draw the line, life would be wonderful.

We did not resolve the boy’s dilemma. We offered a few suggestions. We made him laugh a little as he got his hair cut. He stuck around as Tim got his. We took his photo and wished him good luck and we all went our separate ways.

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The next day when Tim dropped me off at the Old Cataract I went up to the concierge to check-in. Sitting in the lobby was a group of English women waiting to take the bus to the airport. Amid them sat one silver-haired lady, her eyes glowing, her face flushed with happiness. Beside her was a young man, not handsome, but ugly, with long kinky hair sticking out in every direction. He had his arm around her and with the other was holding her hand. On his wrist was a beautiful new watch. His eyes were glowing too! I hope that is as far as this romance would go and that both got a little bit of happiness from each other.

As for me, it was still 1974, and I was still on the verandah of the Luxor Hotel, about to become a part of the Boys-of-Nile-Street-lore. My "Boy" was looking pretty silly walking in and out of the Luxor Hotel, with no apparent purpose except to glance and smile my way as I sat on the terrace awaiting news of our interrupted trip to Aswan. All of Luxor lay before me, the Edwardians and the High Priests beckoning, but I clung to that terrace, afraid to venture out, for fear our group would move without me.

Eventually I smiled back. That was all it took: a smile, which to him became an invitation. Mohammad, as I will call him, came rushing toward me with a big smile on his face.

"Hello, lovely lady, I am sorry you trip has been interrupted." "So am I.""Not to worry. They will get you to Aswan today." "I hope so.""It is lucky for me. I would never have seen your beautiful face.""Do you know when we will be leaving?" I asked, ignoring the poetic compliment."You will leave soon. Would you like to go for a walk along the river?" "No, I don't want to leave in case we move.”"You will be able to see from the casino." "No, I had better stay here."

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"As you wish, but allow me to see you again when you come back from Aswan.""If you like."That was it. The key was in the lock.By evening we were on a slow train to Aswan, an eight-hour journey that stopped

in every whistle stop along the way. By the time we got to the Old Cataract Hotel it was after midnight and we were exhausted.

The Old Cataract Hotel was perched on a granite bluff overlooking the first cataract of the Nile in one of the most beautiful locations in the entire world. Very few places hold such beauty. It has been serving guests in Egypt since 1899 and the tone of that time still hung on in the corridors and the public rooms on that April night in 1974.

Our bus stopped directly in front of the hotel. While we were waiting for check-in, I peeked into the Arabesque dining room and immediately stepped back in time. As tired as I was, I could still see the ghosts. The dining room flourished with activity. A man wiped his mustached-mouth delicately with a linen table napkin. A tabby-frocked women lifted a crystal glass to her red lips and sipped imported French wine. The hotel guests munched on imported cheeses, English ham and bacon, and fresh vegetables from the hotel's garden. Swiss and Italian waiters served them, and imported musicians, hidden behind potted palms and the latticed grill work modeled after the Mosque of Ibn Tulune in Cairo, lured them to the dance floor. Within the alcove of one of the four Mameluke-style iwans, patterned after the Qalaun Mausoleum in Cairo, a waiter handed a gentleman a menu. Its cover celebrated the opening of the Aswan Dam, the first of the two dams that harness the Nile at this point. We were back in 1902 and here sat the men and women who had congregated to celebrate not only the opening of the dam, but the dining room as well. What luck! I was privy to a very special occasion. It was the first hotel dinner and a nervous maitre-de hovered over the waiters and attendants. There was the Khedive Abbas Helmi, ruler of Egypt; nearby was Lord Cromer, England’s firm hand in Egypt and his

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wife; followed by the Duke of Connaught, the third son of Queen Victoria, and his wife the Duchess, who pleased everyone in her ostrich-plumed hat. John Aird, the contractor for the dam was there. So was William Willcox the engineer, and a very young Winston Churchill, reading yesterday's London Times, just beginning to write his own page in history.

My eyes moved away from the celebration. In another corner and another time, the Aga Khan sat with his glamorous wife, the Begum, on their honeymoon. Now it was the 1930s. This religious leader of the Ismaili sect of Islam would receive tribute each year equal to his weight. In the 1930s, the tribute was paid in gold; in the 40s it would be paid in diamonds; and in the 50s, platinum. All were reputedly measured out and rendered here in Aswan. He came to love Aswan so much that it became his final resting place and his mausoleum, across the Nile at the edge of the Western Desert, is visited by thousands of people monthly. No pharaohs waited for me that night. This was foreign territory.Perhaps along the shore of the Nile the ancient world would represent itself. But not here. Not at the Old Cataract Hotel.

Already dazzled by Aswan, I walked back into the lobby. Check-in took forever. We had a four AM wake-up to go to Abu Simbel.

"I don't think I will be able to wake up in a few hours," I lamented."Oh, I'll knock you up," cracked one of my English traveling companions.

She really said it. She really did. I clapped my hands in delight and burst into laughter. I knew the expression. I loved the expression. All my life I had hoped that I would hear someone use the expression. And low and behold, on this exhausting night in exotic Egypt, with the prospect of only a couple hours sleep in front of me and Winston Churchill in the dining room nearby, not only did I hear it, but it was directed at me.

"Ohhhh, Laura," I squealed with delight. "I always hoped to hear someone say that.Perplexed, Laura said, "Say what?" She really didn’t know."Knock you up!" I sang, laughing again. "Don't say that in America."

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Laura began to look sheepish. She really, really, really, did not know."It doesn't mean knock on the door there,” I exclaimed amid my laughter. “It

means get you pregnant."Everyone burst into laughter while Laura turned a deep crimson. She was a very

prim and proper English lady and deeply embarrassed. Yet, she had a slight smile on her shocked face. I was beginning to like my new English friends.

It wasn't long before a galabeyyiah-clad young Nubian, his skin black as ebony, his head wrapped in a white turban, was picking up our baggage and escorting us down a wide hallway. He smiled pleasantly as he led us to our room and opened the door to another glimpse of Edwardian days when bottles of Bay Rum and Violet Water stood in the bathrooms. White mosquito netting was draped over our brass beds. The wooden floors smelled of old oils and gleamed with nearly a century of wax. The porter paraded majestically through the room. The night had one more treasure to give.

"Never mind, madam. Just look. Just look," he exclaimed as he swung open the balcony shutters with a grand gesture. He stood there erect and proud knowing the effect the view would have on me. It was his to give and I accepted it with a full embrace.

Nothing in this world could have prepared me for what I saw through the first floor balcony window of the Old Cataract Hotel in Aswan on that April night when the full moon bathed the mysterious inky-blue Nile in brilliant moonlight. Elephantine Island glimmered like steel in the background, as its granite boulders plummeted into the inky-blue waters. On the river, gliding like huge swans to and fro, were the wonderful white feluccas with their sails billowing in the gentle night breeze. It was like a fairy tale. The full moon stood behind the hotel, hidden from view, but its beams lit the scene below making the water darker, the sails whiter.

"Ifta el Sim sim," (Open Sesame!) sang my heart. And a voice answered.

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"It is the colour of Assouan that matters; it is its colour and its intensity that I should like you to feel. You would realize that never until you had seen the yellowness of its sands, the blackness of its rocks, the purpleness of its waters, and the blueness of its skies, had you known what pure colour meant. I believe you could go colour-mad in Assouan."

I looked around, but no one was there. No ghost appeared. Only the English accented voice hung in the air. I did not know of her yet. I had not read her, yet.

What I saw looking out the balcony window of the Old Cataract Hotel floored a gal from the steel belt of Pennsylvania. Here, for the first time, I sensed the true majesty of the Nile. For the first time, I absorbed it. Here was the mythical Nile, the mysterious waterway that had fascinated man from the dawn of history. This was the river that allowed an entire civilization to thrive because it brought flood to the desert in the heat of summer. This was the river that would not reveal the secret of the source of its flood to pharaoh or to caliph, but dutifully, year after year, century after century, yielded up its silt, its fertility, and its power.

As the dawn began to glimmer and the white thread was distinguished from the black, the river revealed more of itself. This was the first cataract of the Nile. This was the African Nile. Cairo and its tamed, docile, river were left far behind. Here the Nile was pulsing. It rippled and it sang. The great explorers of the nineteenth century were about to smack me right in the face. It spoke of John Speke and of Richard Burton as they trekked their way inland from Zanzibar in 1856 to try to find the source of the Nile; of Samuel Baker and his yellow-haired wife Florence, as they made their way up the Nile, through all the cataracts to name Murchison Falls. Henry Stanley, the upstart American newspaperman who eventually found the source at Lake Victoria, which must have tweaked the noses of the pompous British. I knew of these men. I knew their story. My mind conjured them. But there were others. I knew nothing of the great Arab travelers who explored the Nile. Nor of my fellow American George Bethune English and

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his traveling companions Khalil Aga and Achmed Aga, also Americans, who joined the Mohammad Ali’s army and trekked into the Sudan via Aswan in 1821. I knew nothing of the amazing tales of the American soldiers in the employ of Mohammad Ali, namely Charles Chaillé-Long and Alexander Mason. I only knew mystical names like Mountains of the Moon, Gondokoro, the Sudan, Khartoum, and Meroé. None of these men were outside my window that night. The cataract was blocking them. They did not step forward for me to see. It was me and the Nile. It was the edge of adventure. And I was there.

No, the only voice I heard that night was talking about the color of Aswan. She spelled it colour, so I knew she was British. "Now that I have read you, now that I have been to Aswan many times, now I can answer you Norma Lorimer,” my ghost on that first night in Aswan. “Yes, yes, Aswan is color, splendid color, brilliant light."

But it is more. It is granite boulders, surging waters, and wild, wonderful nature. Aswan is not singular, belonging only to the river, it is also the gift of the sun: warming in winter, crimson at sunset, radiating the desert sands with healing powers and bathing everything it touches in the warm smile of its rays. The rays of the sun force the color from the dullest stone and breathe a silver light into the summer heat.

To me, the best time at Aswan is when the work of the day is at an end; the birds are flying home to their nests atop the Cataract Hotel; the sun is beginning its journey over the Libyan hills into the land of night; the feluccas, their huge sails barely catching a breeze, are drifting with the current on the way to their moorings. This I love best: seated on the balcony of the Old Cataract with the warm air clinging to my skin like velvet, holding a cool, refreshing drink in my hand, far above the noise on the terrace, perched, like a bird, as close to heaven as I'm going to get while I'm alive, and enjoying the sound, the feel, and the smell of Aswan.

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I never left the balcony that night. Aswan soothed and embraced me. It restored me. I was at peace. And I knew I could never leave this place. I could never leave this Egypt.

The next morning we flew off to Abu Simbel. The airports were still under military control in Egypt. After all, the Yom Kippur War had ended only a few months before (in October of 73). We were flying in an old Russian prop plane and I watched in apprehension as the propellers whizzed and the motor droned. There were a few, evidently prominent, Russians on board and the crew catered to them to distraction. My English friends were fuming. I had never seen a Russian before. I was fascinated and a bit frightened, so I kept my nose in my guide book and read about Abu Simbel and the salvage effort in Nubia in the 1960s. I was half afraid the Russians would find out I was an American.

There weren't many American tourists in Egypt in 1974. Modern Egypt began when Gamal Abdul Nasser, Anwar Sadat, and several other military officers took the reins of government away from King Farouk on July 23, 1952 and broke the British hold on the country. When Nasser came to power it was the first time since the days of the Pharaohs, before the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great around 337 BC that an Egyptian stood as supreme ruler of Egypt. The Egyptian people had been second class citizens in their own country for thousands of years. Now the country was theirs. Nasser wanted to build a high dam at Aswan to replace the dam built by the British in 1902. It was necessary to modernize the country, to bring electric power to the villages, and to secure a steady, constant flow of Nile water. He needed money and expertise to pull off such a feat and turned to the United States. Yes, they would help him. But they wanted certain guarantees, certain pledges. Well, Egypt had too much to lose. They had just freed themselves from nearly a century of British domination. To willingly agree to American domination was too much. Nasser refused to align himself with the Americans. He encouraged other powerless countries to do the same. In fact, he created the non-aligned movement.

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Non-alignment may have created a new political force, but did not solve the problem of building the new dam. So, in a bold and unprecedented move, Gamal Abdul Nasser, first President of Egypt, nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956. Nationalizing the Suez Canal was not only acceptable because it returned to Egypt what belonged to them (I know, I know, a big explanation is needed here; but it will ruin the narrative – even this is more than I wanted to write), but it would now provide most of the funds needed to build the dam. For the expertise, since the Americans had too many strings attached to their help, Nasser turned to Russia.

Egypt has always pivoted. After all, it sits at the crossroads of the world.Darius and the Persians turned her East. Greece and Rome turned her West. Islam conquered her from the East. France and England possessed her from the West. Each made a mark on the mores of the Egyptians. Now Russia, Eastern- thinking, irreligious, was to wield its influence. Never were two countries less suited for each other. The Russians did not believe in religion, the Egyptians put religion above country. Back to the point: few Americans visited Egypt during this time.

Despite the austere Russians, the chubby Purser found time to eye and ogle every woman on the plane, smiling broadly and sweating profusely, as he presented each with a cup of coffee and a slice of English pound cake.

Once we landed we had to walk a short distance down a hill and around a bend. As we turned the corner and looked up at the four massive statues of Ramses II all hell broke loose. Luxor Temple may have held tourists, pharaoh’s and Edwardians, but Abu Simbel was beyond that. Pre-historic people were squatting near the edge of the water using sharpened flints to skin a zebra.Hanging over the massive statues was a huge chunk of sandstone. At first I did not know what it was, but then it became obvious: it was a section of Ramses’s shin. It was being lowered into place after the massive reconstruction of the

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temple when Nasser’s dam was under construction. The men and women of the salvage effort to save the artifacts along the river in Nubia were all there. The air was filled with the languages of the world as the work was being completed.Ramses, who because he was pharaoh, could be in two places at once, kept riding his chariot back and forth to be sure everything was returned to its proper place. He need not have worried. The façade was extraordinary. The four massive statues, despite the visible cuts in the stone, were magnificent. They were probably even more magnificent when the Nile lapped at their feet before the building of the High Dam, but they were magnificent.

Then my mouth fell open. There she was: the purple shadow that had rustled her skirts at Luxor Temple. Only this time she was seated under an umbrella watching a man on a shaky ladder with a pail of water clinging precariously to its sides. She was actually supervising as a man washed the face of the northernmost statue of Ramses II.

"Stop that Salame, you silly man," she bellowed at the poor Nubian below. "Reis Hassan will fall."

"Damn that Robert Hays," she went on, "the least he could do is clean up his mess."

My goodness! Who was she? She certainly was forceful. I wasn't exactly shy, but she intimidated the hell out of me.

"You there," she shouted. I looked around."You, you, don't look around, I'm talking to you.""Me?" I said. I slowly crawled forward to meet this woman from the past. "Yes, yes, come here and give me a hand. This job seems harder that the

first time we did it. Something's different and I can't quite put my finger on it." She turned to me,"I've been watching you. I think you had better get my book. You have a big job

ahead if you intend to join us. Maybe bigger than you can manage.""Please do not be offended," I begged, "but who are you?"

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"Who am I? Who am I?" she looked at me in disbelief. “Lucy, Lucy, come here. Tell this silly goose of a Cook's tourist who I am."

"Hello, young lady," came a more reasonable voice. “Please let me present Lady Amelia Edwards.”

I was dumbfounded. I knew who Amelia Edwards was. I was reading her book, A Thousand Miles Up the Nile. Among her other credentials she founded the Egypt Exploration Society, one of the most important organizations related to Egypt. She also founded a Chair of Egyptology. I was not only standing in front of a formidable personage; I was actually talking to her.

Just then a man brought a steaming kettle and climbed the ladder behind Reis Hassan.

"What are you doing?" I asked."We are cleaning up the mess made by Robert Hays and his fellow

travelers.""What did they do?""Well, in this instance they made a plaster cast of Ramses. But they left the white

plaster hanging from the face like bad sores.""What does the hot water do?""That's not hot water, its strong Egyptian tea. I think we finally found a purpose for

the ghastly brew. Believe it or not, it tints the face back to the original color.""It does!" I exclaimed."Move along child, move along. Go see the temple with the rest of those strange

creatures. I'll be seeing you from time to time. Just don't leave any messes around for me to clean up."

She trudged off toward the water where her boat was waiting for her shaking her head as she moved along,

"I just know something is different here. I don't remember all those cuts on the statues. I don't remember some of the other settings too. And the Nile

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seems so wide here. I don't remember it being so wide in Nubia. Something has changed."She didn’t see what I saw. She didn’t see the salvage going on, nor the prehistoric

peoples. Miss Amelia was within her time frame. I was not."Miss Amelia, Miss Amelia," I shouted, running after her, my camera banging into my chest. "I know what's different."

She stopped and turned toward me her long skirts catching the wind, her silly hat about to blow away,

"Well, speak up child. speak up." "They built a dam.""What? A dam? A dam, you say?""Yes, a dam," I thought for a moment, "a barrage."Miss Amelia took me by the arm with renewed interest and we walked together

toward the lake."Come along child, we'll have good English tea and you can tell me all about it,"

quipped Amelia. Her eyes squinted as she eyed my camera.When we reached the water I saw the strangest felucca I had ever seen and it was

flying the Union Jack."What kind of felucca is that?" I asked."That's not a felucca," she said impatiently. "It's a dahabeyyiah, da ha bey' ha, an

Egyptian houseboat.""Where did you get it?""We picked it up in Bulaq, near Cairo.""You travelled all the way from Cairo in that thing? How lucky you are."She nodded approvingly as a slight smile played about her lips, I guessed I was

beginning to score a few points with this formidable woman. I wasn't the Cook's tourist she thought I was. What is a Cook's tourist anyway? But, then she exclaimed exasperated. "You are tiresome. Read my book before you ask me any more questions. Then, hopefully, you will ask intelligent ones."

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We walked aboard the dahabeyyiah, called the Philae, by means of a shaky, single board that stretched from the sands at the shore of the lake to the edges of the wiggling boat. Amelia did it quite gracefully, as if she has grown accustomed to it. It took me a little longer to navigate it, much to her amusement.

"You don't seem very knowledgeable about Egypt. How can you possible know what is different around here?"

“Well, I do. In 1902 the British built the Aswan Dam over the Nile at the first cataract.”

"They did what?""They built the Aswan Dam. They felt it was necessary to control the Nile flood

and increase agriculture.""Well, I know they were talking about the need for irrigation water. But really, over

the cataract. That is not possible. We just spent a number of days and a whole lot of trouble navigating and portaging the Philae over that cataract."

"You did what?""We carried the Philae by land passed the cataract. We could not navigate it. It

would have broken the old boat apart.""Well, I don't know when you did it, but you will never be able to do it now," I said,

"Two dams stand in your way.""Oh, now there are two!" she looked at me with squinting eyes. "Yes! Two!" I said. "In 1960 the Egyptians built the High Dam." "In 1960 you say?""Yes, 1960.""I see, and what year is it now?' "It is 1974."Miss Amelia fell silent. We were seated on wonderful oriental carpets, our backs

propped up with soft pillows, on the deck of her boat. Reis Hassan, finished with the noble task of washing the great Ramses's face, was seeing to the preparation of mid-morning tea. In front of me was a short-legged table, a

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tableyyiah, covered with a large brass tray, and an assortment of English cakes, well, Egyptian-style English cakes.

"Who are you traveling with child?""A tour group out of England," I answered."Yes, yes, a Cook's tour. Don't you know traveling in a tour is frowned upon by

independent travelers?""Yes," I said sheepishly."Especially a Cook's tour. That damn man ruined travel with his packaged tours.

Most disgraceful. Most disgraceful," she muttered. "And where do you come from?""I'm an American."She raised her eyebrows, "That explains it." and became silent again.Lucy handed me a hot cup of tea. I took a sip and my eyes widened in amazement,

it was Earl Grey tea.Finally, Miss Amelia turned to me, "I guess there is a lot we can learn from each

other."I, too, was beginning to understand what this meeting was all about. It was the

first time one of the ghosts ever spoke directly to me."Yes, I think we can. Let me tell you about the High Dam." I thanked my stars that I

had done my homework.Miss Amelia picked up her tea, beckoned her traveling companion to join us, and

nestled back on her cushions. I told her all about the building of the High Dam, the flooding of Nubia, the disbursement of the Nubians to a new land north of Aswan.

When I finished she was silent for a while, then she asked, "What about all the temples? What became of them?"Oh, I think you would have been proud of the world in 1960, Miss Amelia.

Egyptologists from around the world, regardless of their politics, descended on Nubia in its final hours. They worked feverishly to save and record

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as much as they could. Egypt gave them license to save and salvage and take away."I took out my guide book and found the page so I could tell her."The Greco-Roman temple of Debod is now in Madrid. The Temple of Tafa is in the

courtyard of the Museum in Leiden. The Temple of Dendur is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Eighteenth Dynasty temple of Ellessya, begun by Thutmoses III, is in the Egyptian Museum in Turin."

"Kalabsha?" she asked."Kalabsha is saved, it is now near the High Dam. Kertassi is nearby. As is Beit el

Wali. Maharraka is at Wadi el Sebua and Derr is at Amada. They are all safe."Amelia and her companion eyed each other, "And Philae?" she said with great

hesitation."Philae is a wonderful story, Miss Amelia. When the first dam was built the water

deluged the temple. It lay underwater most of the century. But when the High Dam was planned the Temple of Isis was dismantled block by block and moved to the nearby island of Agilkai where it has been rebuilt. You can see it if you wish."

"A task equal to portage," said Amelia pensively. "Greater.""And here, what was done here at Abu Simbel?""Oh, Miss Amelia. We are looking at the greatest salvage effort of all. The entire

complex was moved back from the banks of the river. A manmade hill was constructed and block by block the temples were reconstructed."

"What of the solstices? Does the sun shine into the inner most rooms on the solstices?"

"Yes, yes it does. And you can walk into the mountain to see the story of how the engineers accomplished this miracle. You can go whenever you wish."

She paused again. Then she stirred.

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"Well, let me mingle with Mr. Cook's tourists," she groaned as she rose from the cushions and walked off the perilous gangplank. I got up to follow. Lucy gently put her hand on my arm, "I think this is a journey Amelia should do alone."

She was right. I watched as the figure of this amazing woman moved toward the temple. She slipped between the tourists without them knowing she was there, and disappeared into the mountain.

I left Abu Simbel without seeing her again.

Back at the Cataract we went into dinner. The crew from our Abu Simbel plane was there. They had an overnight in Aswan. By evenings end my middle- aged English roommate had latched on to the chubby Purser. She hooked me up with the Co-Pilot and we went walking in the garden. We weren't ten steps out the door when she asked me not to come back to the room for at least an hour. Then off she went through the lobby and back to our room, alone. She opened the shutters to that splendid view and up went the Purser, climbing over our balcony and into our room.

As for me, I was stuck with this overzealous Co-Pilot professing undying love and hoping I would agree to, "marry me [him] for one night." At the time I did not know it, but it was obvious to anyone who had any experience with Egyptian men that this was not a boy from Nile Street. He did not chase women. He was a 25 to 30 year old, single, Egyptian man who, in true Islamic fashion, had remained celibate all his life waiting for marriage. But tonight he was willing to break his long held vows to God with this infidel bitch: this woman of the devil that was enticing him, luring him, in the jasmine-scented garden of the Old Cataract Hotel. She was to blame. After all, had she not agreed to walk with him in the garden? What pure, God-fearing, woman would do such a terrible thing?

All I was, was me, American-born, American-breed, daughter of Italian ancestry, fending him off. I was not the least bit interested in his advances. I wasn't luring him. All I did was agree to walk in a garden with him. To him, a

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walk in the garden was the same as consent. After all, all American women were loose. A good women belonged in the home. Any decent woman in Egypt went out only with a chaperone. (How could I explain that my chaperone was in our room banging away for all she was worth.)

East was meeting West, and neither understood the other. Here was his bias. Here was his view of the West, as inbred in him as my view of the East.Before we left that garden, that man hated me and I didn't know it. Not only was I a tramp. I was a whore, and what was worse he had failed to seduce me. Could anything be more humiliating?

I would learn in my years in Egypt that the man was right. This was his world and I was a visitor. I had to play by his rules. My ignorance of his rules did not matter. My actions that night turned out to be harmless, but that was not always the case. To understand this point was to understand a lot about the differences between Eastern and Western thinking.

No, this loose woman's downfall did not come in the jasmine-scented garden of the Old Cataract, but it did come. It came in Luxor. When we arrived at the old Luxor airport, Mohammad was waiting at the entrance, all of his well- rehearsed charm surrounding him. I didn't have a chance.

"Hello, beautiful lady."I was surprised. How did he know I was on this plane? "Hello." "I thought about you all week. I could hardly wait to see you." "Is that right?""You are staying at the Winter Palace?" "Yes, we are staying at the Winter Palace.""I will see you there and take you for tea on the terrace."And as I boarded the bus he disappeared into the crowd. But true to his word, as

I alighted at the Winter Palace Hotel, there he was, like magic, waiting for me. Again, I didn’t have a chance.

"Come, come we will have tea."

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Tea on the terrace of the Old Winter Palace Hotel was an institution in Luxor, especially at sunset. I did not know it. But Mohammad knew it. He knew all the tricks to entice his prey. He knew what to say and how to say it. He probably had been saying the same words every four or five days since he was twelve years old. And he was probably 90% successful. It wasn’t him. It was the terrace. The waiters. The view. The Nile. The Theban Hills. The horses and carriages awaiting us.

We had our tea. A carriage clopped, clopped slowly into the long line in front of the hotel, the horse anxious for its feed. A donkey brayed. The pink stone of the Winter Palace blushed a dusty rose. The white sails of the feluccas turned golden. The sun fell over the Nile into the Theban hills, into the Valley of the Kings, into the land of the dead. The palm trees swished in the gentle breeze as the sky rainbowed orange and mint and yellow and crimson. A silence fell over the terrace. It was sunset in Luxor.

I went in to dinner wrapped in a golden glow. Dinner was disappointing.All the meals in the hotels were disappointing. No shish-ka-bob. No Oriental pastries. No lentil soup. It was all English, in imitation of the Edwardians: cream soup, a fish course, a meat course with boiled meat in gravy, overcooked vegetables, and then flan for dessert. There was no ham, no potted salmon, no imported cheeses and wines. Sometimes we had a big luscious orange or creme caramel, but usually pinkish, tasteless, flan. The only Oriental flavor permitted to grace the tables was the beverage karkadee, the wonderful, deep red and purple karkadee, a brew of the hibiscus flower. It was sweet and good.

When dinner was over we gathered on the terrace and were herded to the awaiting carriages for the trip to Karnak Temple. Waiting for me at curb side was none other than Mohammad.

"Hello, it is me again.""Well, hello Mohammad," the key was turning. "Did you enjoy your dinner?""It was OK.

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"Permit me to invite you to a true Oriental dinner. A midnight dinner at my home.""At your home? With real Egyptian food?" I said innocently. "Yes, I am sure you will love it.""Yes, I am sure I will. I would love to come." Turning! "Good. I will meet you here after the Son e Lumiere."He knew. He knew how to turn the key and open the lock. He knew I would be

enticed with the one thing my senses were lacking. I was embracing everything about Egypt. I loved the sounds of it. I loved the smell of it. The sights, both real and imaginary, were overwhelming me. Now, I was going to get the taste and the feel of it (in more ways than one as it turned out), and I welcomed it.

I was quickly whisked into my carriage and off at a fast trot to Karnak. As we rounded the bend at the end of Nile Street it became January 27, 1799, and Napoleon's soldiers surrounded me. They were applauding. They, too, had rounded the bend and on their first view of the temple they burst into spontaneous applause.

Lt. Desvernois, Napoleon's man at Karnak wrote, "Without an order being given the men formed their ranks and presented arms to the accompaniment of the drums and the bands."

I was as bewitched as they. The lights on the pylon became ancient banners flying in the Nile breeze. The great gate opened and instead of tourists and tour boats plying the Nile, a scared bark came forth. Instead of archaeologists sifting sand to discover the ancient incantations, Priests in transparent skirts and shaven heads walked among the great pillars.

The Son e Lumiere burst into sound as we stood in front of the First Pylon at Karnak,

Welcome traveler to Upper Egypt. You have traveled far.But here you can go no further,

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For here you are at the beginning of time.We moved on in the Karnak night, past the great colonnade, past Hatshepsut’s

fallen obelisk, to the shore of the sacred lake. There we sat to watch and listen as the story of Karnak came to life before us. I was transported. I was lost in sound and light, and monuments, and priests, and pharaohs and even ordinary workers. It was a time out of time.

Enthralled, I returned to my carriage. We had been given a number to remember to find our carriages. But when I looked outside the second pylon there were dozens of carriages waiting helter-skelter for tourists. They were all black, all the drivers were robed and had wrapped heads, I doubted if anyone could find their original dray. They all looked alike.

As I looked around someone took me by the arm. It was Mohammad."I could not wait to see you. I had to come for you here. I hope you are not

upset."

Upset? I was overwhelmed. He took my hands into his and opened themto kiss the palms. I shivered. My goodness, this was not going to be like the garden at the Old Cataract. He placed a necklace of jasmine over my head and it fell to my chest like an avalanche, its heavy fragrance melting the last vestiges of doubt from my mind. My brain had warned me not to go off with this Oriental man into the Luxor night. But the fresh jasmine touching my bare skin and the taste of danger in my mouth outweighed my common sense. My mind was still reverberating to the sounds of "Welcome traveler to Upper Egypt. . ." I wanted this experience. I wanted to meet an Egyptian family. I wanted to eat Egyptian food in an Egyptian home. I wanted to make love to this Egyptian man.

We got into a carriage and were whisked away. This time we did not trot down palm-lined Nile Street along the river. This time, under the waning of the full moon, we went into what the British would call the Native Quarter. My heart raced.

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The Boys of Nile StreetCassandra Vivian

The romance of the East is the topic of this surreal essay where pharaohs, Edwardians, and aging hippies mix and mingle along the Nile. The ghosts of such illustrious personages as Amelia Edwards and Francis Frith meet temple dancers and each other in famous sites like Luxor Temple and Abu Simbel, while modern middle aged women allow themselves to be wooed and won in modern day Egypt. It is funny. It is prophetic. It speaks of the author’s vast knowledge of the country, its history, and its pathos.